Security Infrastructure Market to Reach $86 Billion by 2016

According to research firm Gartner, Inc., worldwide spending on security is expected to rise to $60 billion in 2012, an increase of 8.4 percent from $55 billion in 2011 -- and that growth will continue, rising to $86 billion in 2016.

"Gartner defines the security infrastructure markets as the software, services and network security appliances used to secure enterprise and consumer IT equipment," writes Computer Business Review's Steve Evans. "Cloud-based security is expected to be one of the areas where spending will increase the most, along with security information and event management (SIEM), Web gateway and managed security services."

"In a survey of businesses, the company said that 45 percent expected a security budget increase, while 50 percent expected their budget to remain the same," writes ChannelBiz UK's Andrea Marie-Petrou. "Only five percent expected their budget to decrease in 2012. And Gartner said this looked to be a global trend with the patterns not shifting across regions, although some countries in emerging regions demonstrated a much higher expectation of an increase. This included emerging countries such as Brazil, China and India."

"Our most current forecast reflects our expectation that the various markets within security infrastructure will be affected to different degrees," Gartner research director Lawrence Pingree said in a statement. "In 2012, the market contributing most to overall growth, excluding exchange rate effects, is security services, followed by security software. We expect current market trends will keep security infrastructure growth at between 9 percent and 11 percent from 2011 through 2013, but we are factoring in a higher degree of caution in terms of buying behavior."